San Diego tea party Ballot Proposition Recommendations

My fellow SLOB, W.C. Varones, has posted tea party recommendations for this June's ballot. Since there is no official tea party position, and everyone can claim a leadership role in the tea party, I am following suit. I am a resident of the city of San Diego, so I am not covering propositions in El Cajon, Oceanside or other areas. On to the props - I am using my own shortened and more accurate versions of the titles. Don't like my characterizations? Tough, get your own blog; free speech rocks.

Statewide Propositions

Proposition 28 - The Faux Term Limits Initiative - NO

This measure reduces the total time a legislator can serve in office (Assembly or Senate) to 12 years, down from 14 years. More term limits, hooray? Wrong. Right now, members of the Assembly are limited to 6 years in office; if they want to stay in Sacramento they have to run for the State Senate. Under this proposal, an Assemblyman will go from being limited to three terms to being limited to six terms, because the new language doesn't specify which house the term limits apply to, unlike now. Under the current system State Senators are limited to two four year terms, if Prop 28 passes they will go to three. This will actually increase the time that legislators remain ensconced in uncompetitive districts. Vote NO.

Proposition 29 - Cigarette Tax Dollars for Special Interests - NO

From the LOWV website:

This measure increases--effective October 2012--the existing state excise tax on cigarettes by $1 per pack. The total state excise tax, therefore, would be $1.87 per pack.

So the tax is set to increase by 115%. We also know that increasing tobacco taxes never generates the revenue projected. Where would the money go? Well to fund the California Cancer Research Life Sciences Innovation Trust Fund silly. Who could be against that? Well, it turns out that this will be a slush fund, where research dollars are directed by unelected officials, appointed by politicians who can pay back their supporters. From Ballotpedia.org, the members of the committee to funnel research money to close pals of the medical and political establishment are:

• 3 University of California chancellors (Berkeley, San Francisco and Santa Cruz)
• 3 "selected from among Cancer Center Directors of National Cancer Institute designated cancer centers located within the State of California" (appointed by the Governor of California)
• 1 "affiliated with a California Academic Medical Center who is a practicing physician with expertise in the prevention, treatment or research of cardiovascular disease" (appointed by the Governor of California)
• 2 "selected from among California representatives of California or national disease advocacy groups whose focus is tobacco-related illness, at least one of whom shall be a person who has been treated for a tobacco related illness." (appointed by Director of California Department of Public Health)
• A Committee to establish a peer review process for selection of grants modeled on the process used by the National Institutes of Health.

Tobacco tax dollars couldn't be in better hands, given all the politicians involved. Is the state of California going to get into the cancer research funding business, given all our other problems? Further, this is an example of ballot box budgeting. I will stipulate that the Democrat controlled legislature has not done their job for decades; but we are getting to the point where angels themselves couldn't straighten out our state budget, given the complexities of initiatives directing spending. Vote NO.


San Diego Ballot Measures

Proposition A - Project Labor Agreements Can Not be Mandatory - Yes

This explanation from the LOWV site is simple.

The ballot measure states that except as required by State or federal contracting or procurement obligation, or as a condition of the receipt of State or federal funds, the City shall not require a contractor on a construction project to participate in a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) as a contract condition.

It prevents the city from imposing a PLA condition in order to win a contract. Why this is controversial is beyond me. The bidding contractors for city work should be able to bid based on their knowledge of their own costs, without having to worry that the city will side with unions and impose additional costs on projects. Richard Rider has signed on to the ballot argument for the proposition, always a big endorsement in my view. Vote YES.

Proposition B - San Diego Employee Pension Reform - Yes

There has been a huge discussion of the details of this proposition, so I only want to make a few simple points of my own. First, even the proposition's opponents concede it will save the city and therefore the taxpayers, money. Their claim is that the savings don't come from the change to a defined contribution system. So what? This is a package deal that saves money.

Second, is a philosophical matter. Who should be responsible for the management of pensions, the employee or employer. I think our experience over the last two decades has answered the question. The employees must be in charge of their own retirement planning, because neither unions, nor businesses, nor government can be counted upon to keep their best interests first and foremost. This is how we got into this mess, unions cut deals with politicians that couldn't be kept and we ended up with a disaster. Defined benefits require pay as you go accounting, which makes the costs of pensions more transparent.

Finally, there is the question of risk. Defined benefit pensions puts the risk for future benefits on the taxpayers. If the market tanks, or politicians are corrupt or some catastrophe strikes, it puts the taxpayers at risk. I don't want the risk, I have enough of my own. Why should taxpayers, who are mostly relying on 401(k)s for their own retirement, and shouldering their own retirement risk, also should the retirement risk of employees? They shouldn't.

Vote YES.

B-Daddy's San Diego Proposition Guide

My ballot came in the mail over the weekend; since I am a resident of the City of San Diego, it included both the city and county propositions. Here's my run down on the initiatives, and I have to admit, it wasn't that tough. Before we start, I have to give a shout out to Richard Rider, who has been submitting arguments against tax increases for as long as I can remember, at least going back to 1985, when I was first stationed here. He worked on the argument against Proposition J and they are great and will be quoted.

One more shout out, to BallotPedia, a wealth of information about initiatives.

On to the props - I am not using the official titles, my shortened and more accurate version. Don't like my characterizations? Tough, get your own blog, free speech rocks.


Prop A - Prohibits Project Labor Agreements - YES

". . .the county shall not require a contractor on a construction project to execute or otherwise become a party to a project labor agreement as a condition of bidding, negotiating, awarding or performing of a contract."

Labor unions use project labor agreements to set wages on government projects at the union rate. This discourages firms that don't employ union members not to bid and DRIVES UP PROJECT COSTS. This is an easy call. San Diego County already has a law like this on the books, but if the Board of Supervisors shifts left, this could be repealed, so the amendment is needed as part of the county charter.



Proposition B - Makes Deputy City Attorneys Like Civil Servants - yes

This basically says that all of the attorneys below the elected City Attorney can only be fired for just cause, to "protect them from politics." Everyone is for this, even Todd Gloria AND Carl DeMaio, so I guess I should be too. It would certainly prevent the loss of attorneys we saw under Mike Aguirre. But I wonder if we will see a City Attorney bemoaning the fact that no one in the office will do what he says. B-Daddy gives this a yes, barely.





Proposition C - Waiting for Godot - Yes

This proposition is to allow the Pacific Highlands Ranch to continue development even though the current ordnance requires them to wait for Caltrans to finish the I-5/SR-56 interchange. This is currently scheduled for 2020. Of course you have to vote for this. Below is a picture of one of the things not to do while waiting for Caltrans to finish anything on time:

By the way, and speaking of Caltrans, if you were stuck in traffic today, you can thank Jerry Brown, who seriously set back our freeway building programs when he was governor previously.


Proposition D - "Temporary" One-Half Cent Sales Tax - NO NO NO

I've blogged about this extensively, do I really need to say more?





Proposition J - More Taxes for Government Schools - NO

The usual suspects are making the argument that the government schools need more funding and they promise to only spend it on classroom learning. This measure reminds me of Proposition D, they make a big deal of how well the school district will manage the extra money, but do nothing up front to address their prior fiscal mismanagement. Basically, they want to find a way to pay for a teacher salary increase of 7% that starts in 2012 along with other increased benefits. As Richard Rider and others also point out, per pupil spending has increased about 34% since 2003.


Make sure you vote, get those ballots in the mail early. There is little going on that should change our mind. If I missed a local proposition in your area, Richard Rider has some recommendations always guaranteed to keep your taxes low.